This invention relates to kitchen utensils that are used in contact with food containing surfaces including the surfaces of vessels such as pots and pans, bowls, bottles and jars and other foods and equipment and with food contained within or supported by such surfaces. For example such kitchen utensils include whisks, pastry blenders and cleaning tools. It is often important when using such kitchen utensils that the contact between the utensil and the vessel, or the food contained in the vessel in the case of a whisk or pastry blender, be maximised for efficient and effective use.
Generally such whisks comprises loops, blades, bristles or other elongate members that have a cross-sectional profile that is round. For example, FIG. 1a illustrates a utensil 10, which is a conventional whisk, generally having an array of flexible elongate members 18 (e.g. whisking elements or cleaning elements) connected at an inner end 14 of a handle 12. Other conventional whisk configurations are known to those skilled in the art such as the balloon whisk, flat whisk, and Swedish style helical whisk illustrated in applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 6,257,752 B1 issued Jul. 10, 2001. Additional kitchen utensil configurations such as the ball whisk described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,264,356 B1 issued Jul. 24, 2001 to WMF AG and the stirrer described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,947,595 issued Sep. 7, 1999 to Rösle Metallwarenfabrik GmbH & Co. KG are also known. Another example of a kitchen utensil is a cleaning tool that generally has cleaning elements such as bristles extending from a central body.
Common among the above described kitchen utensils is the round shape of the cross-sectional profile 19 of the elongate members 18 as illustrated in FIG. 1b. The round profile 19 of the elongate members 18 (e.g. whisking elements or cleaning elements) of the kitchen utensils tends to minimize the frictional engagement of the elements and the vessel or food with which the kitchen utensil is being used. As such, for example, most whisks are not well-suited for scraping food from a vessel such as from a mixing bowl to a baking pan. Increased user effort is often required to achieve desired results or more than one utensil may be required when such results are not achievable.
It is therefore desired to provide a kitchen utensil that improves the contact between the utensil and vessel or food within the vessel without the requirement of increasing the effort of the user.